Every other week for the last two semesters, I've given you all 750 words of my own thoughts. Unfortunately, most of these thoughts were met with a profound and suffocating ambivalence.
If there is one thing I've learned while working for The Chronicle, it's this: you care a lot more about what you write than other people do. To the author, a column is a momentous event-something in which you hope to spark a reaction.
To the reader, it is a way to kill time before class starts.
Of course, there have been exceptions. People have occasionally told me that they liked what I wrote, while others have gone out of their way to remind me that I am utterly incompetent. Perhaps the best example comes from an anonymous online critic who once wrote in response to a particular column, "This was a poorly thought-out, poorly written, uncreative, uninsightful [sic] article. It was also very juvenile. I feel as though I am a bit less educated for having read this."
Ouch.
Yet, I almost feel like this was a compliment on my writing ability. The bottom line is that it's very difficult to offend someone this badly. Not just any crap would prompt such a passionately negative response. I firmly believe that anyone can write a mediocre, forgettable column. But only my words have the power to actually make people dumber!
Leaving your work open to public criticism teaches you that it's wrong to simply dismiss your negative feedback. One of life's harshest yet most beautiful truths is that there are always going to be idiots. And if not idiots, then at least people you wildly disagree with. We human beings have been around a while now, and I know that if we haven't found the way for everyone to like and agree with each other yet, we never will.
Nowhere is this more evident on campus than in The Chronicle itself. Not a week goes by when I don't have to listen to someone tell me how they think The Chronicle is pure garbage or how the overwhelming majority of people who write for it are complete idiots. And honestly, I'm no different. Every day, I open The Chronicle and I'm greeted with opinions I don't share and news I could not care less about.
Seriously, I don't know what I'm going to do if I read another column about the horrors of dining on campus. I know, options are limited, overpriced and unhealthy. And yes, I realize that the Chick-fil-A people are very nice. Guys, I get it already. You can stop now.
Yet, I continue to read, not out of some twisted joy I feel out of being annoyed, but because every day The Chronicle verifies the refreshing fact that the whole world doesn't think like I do. After all, ubiquitous agreement is not just scary; it's incredibly boring.
I don't know what I would have to find to complain about if I enjoyed everything I read. I shudder just thinking about it. I've realized that I do not just simply enjoy the process of hating or disagreeing with columns; I need it. And I know that I'm not alone here. We can all probably recall only a handful of columns or articles we actually liked, yet we could fill a book with the ones we have despised.
And all of this is what makes something like The Chronicle so worthwhile. Psychologist Dan Gilbert once wrote that, "We live in a world in which people are censured, demoted, imprisoned, beheaded, simply because they have opened their mouths, flapped their lips, and vibrated some air. Yes, those vibrations can make us feel sad, or stupid, or alienated. Tough sh-. That's the price of admission to the marketplace of ideas. Hateful, blasphemous, prejudiced, vulgar, rude or ignorant remarks are the music of a free society, and the relentless patter of idiots is how we know we are in one. When all the words in our public conversation are fair, good and true, it's time to make a run for the fence."
On a similar note, the morning I open The Chronicle and find that I like-or even agree with-everything inside its pages is also the morning I stop reading it. Please, let's all just pray that day never comes.
Jordan Axt is a Trinity junior. His column runs every other Friday.
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